


Everything we used to be

by sgtbaarnes (Thighz)



Series: Reaper 76 Week [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Memories, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, reaper 76 week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:46:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9327383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thighz/pseuds/sgtbaarnes
Summary: Memories are like gardens. Jack's garden is a battlefield.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is for Day One of Reaper 76 week.  
> History/Decay 
> 
> It's my first Overwatch fic, so be gentle. I'm a Stucky writer most days and I'm kinda procrastinating on my current fic to participate in this weeks festivities. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**‘How we were’**

_History/Decay_

Day 1

**Everything we used to be**

 

“Wake up, Soldier.”

The voice is high, female, and it grates against his sensitive ears. The air reeks of bleach and the metallic sting of machinery. Jack flexes against the restraints holding him to a chair of some sort, wrists bound to the arms, calves to the legs, neck to the headrest.

He can’t see much without the visor. He notes that his entire faceplate is missing and two hazy figures hover before him in a highly florescent room. The lights burn his ruined retinas but the smell is the worst.

“Hello Soldier 76.” Another voice, this one male and on his left.

“Talon.” Jack grunts.

“Correct.” The woman states, “You were surprisingly easy to catch.”

That was a lie. He had known Reaper was there. Could feel Widowmaker’s eyes on him from wherever her web was hidden. He had _let_ them take him.

“I see the S.E.P’s serum did little to stop the aging process.” The woman snorts, “Or heal the most basic of scars.” The cold tip of her finger runs along the scar marring his face and ends where his mouth is burned and mangled from the explosion.

“He’s also blind.” The man notes and Jack can hear him scribbling on a clipboard.

“Is extracting the information even worth it?” The woman asks, “The serum was supposed to create the perfect soldier. Look at him. One small explosion and it didn’t even take care of the wounds.”

“We can perfect it once we have what we need.” The man shrugs.

 

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

 

Gabriel hates computers, always has. It’s even more frustrating when your body doesn’t stay solid long enough to even press the keys. He scowls at the double monitors in front of him and hates technology with a burning passion.

“Looking for something?” Ameile’s thick accent inquiries from behind him, her legs thrown over the arm of a recliner.

“No.” He grunts.

“Perhaps the interrogation of one, Soldier 76?” She grins.

He turns to scowl at her, “No.”

Her long legs slip from the arm and as she stands her grin is practically predatory, “I take point on the next payload extraction and I’ll get you in.”

He scowls from her to the computer and back, “Fine.”

She does some fancy finger work on the keyboard and the screens flash once. One is blue and the other shows the Soldier bound to a chair with two of the head Talon scientists hovering before him.

Something hitches in Gabriel’s chest at the mangled warzone of Jack Morrison’s face. His nose is bleeding, eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. The chairs he’s in has some version of a neural headdress hanging above the white hair and a blue screen beside it.

“ _Here’s what’s going to happen, Soldier. This is a neural interface that can extract potent memories from the medial temporal lobe of your brain. We will get to see and hear them.”_ The man states automatically, waving his pen at the blue screen.

“ _And the point of all this?”_ Jack scoffs.

 _“You were a Commander, Soldier. Somewhere in that ancient brain of yours is the secret to the Enhancement serum.”_ The man rambles on, “ _We are going to find it and duplicate it.”_ He gives Jack a disgusted once over, “ _Hopefully with better results than your sad outcome.”_

Gabriel glances down at his hand as it dissolves into smoke then forms back into a hand. Barely old, no wrinkles.

“ _You really think they told me what was in it_?” Jack laughs.

“ _Only one way to find out.”_ The woman reaches over and attaches the headdress to keys points along Jack’s hairline and temples. The man walks up to the blue screen and pulls a keyboard from beneath it.

“ _Let’s start with….your first day of the program, shall we?”_

The man presses a button and Jack’s shoulders tense-eyes squeezing shut against a pain Gabriel can’t feel. The blue screen to his left flashes once, twice and then it’s like seeing the world from Jack’s eyes. He’s shaking hands with their Colonel as the older man welcomes all the new subjects to the program.

Gabriel can see himself out of the corner of Jack’s eyes, because, hell, the man IS looking at him.

“ _Another.”_ The man clicks again.

This memory is familiar, Gabriel welcoming Jack into the rec room where all the older wave of recruits are lounging and playing video games.

“ _This is where we wind down.”_ Memory Gabe waves and Jack nods.

“ _Get a lot of downtime?”_

Memory Gabe shrugs, “ _No.”_

The memory fades and a few more flash through. So many memories that Gabriel remembers as Jack does. Longing looks, claps on the back. The horrific hangovers after injection day. Some days they both collapsed on the couch and didn’t move from each others sides.

Then the first mission they did together hovers before him. Easy extraction of hostages. Memory Gabe is leading them through a mangled building, Jack right on his tail, gun up and eyes scanning every nook and cranny of the rooms they enter. Gabe remembers being so confident going in. Jack at his six, Ana with a sniper atop the adjoining building.

The memory before Jacks eyes explode, debris and the force of the explosion send them back against a wall. The speakers on Gabe’s monitor echo Ana’s voice asking if they are okay. Status. Status.

Memory Jack glances over and presses his fingers to Memory Gabe’s throat, searching for a pulse and whispering unintelligible words.

“ _Reyes is unconscious. What was that Amari?”_ Memory Jack hisses.

“ _Must have been hidden charges in the room ahead. They just put a canyon between you two and the hostages.”_

Memory Jack cusses and the memory fades to a blue screen.

Gabe flicks his gaze to Jack, who seizes against the chair, inhaling sharply in pain. The woman is monitoring his vitals from another computer.

“ _Give him a second or you’ll fry the stem.”_ She snorts.

Gabe’s fingers curl into a fist against his thigh at the blatant disregard they seem to have for Jack’s wellbeing. Jack’s chest is heaving and his eyes are shut tight in agony.

Gabe’s cold heart twists at the expression. There had been a time where that look put him to his knees before the man, whispering comfort and promises he never kept.

“ _Again._ ” The man says.

The blue screen flickers black. It hovers there silent like death with no light. Gabe wonders for a second if they really did damage something. Then the world floods with light and Memory Jack is sitting up in his bedroom, arm raised against the burning light above him.

Memory Gabe is standing in the doorway, wearing his dark blue hoodie, arms crossed over his chest.

“ _What the fuck was that, Morrison?”_

“ _I apologized already, Gabriel. I’m sorry. I didn’t-.”_

_“You don’t fucking kiss a guy like that and leave him standing like a_ _cabrón in the hall!”_

_“You’re not mad?”_ Memory Jack inquires.

Memory Gabe moves across the small room with a purpose in his stride and takes a seat beside him on the bed. Gabe watches himself reach forward, remembering that first soul burning kiss, as he put his hand behind Jacks head and dragged him forward into another one.

The memory blinks out and Gabe watches as Jack hisses at the male scientist.

“ _That’s private_!” He snarls.

“ _Nothing is private anymore, Soldier.”_ The man sneers, “ _At least we know how you got so high up on the totem pole.”_

The scar across Jack’s face turns his angry ugly as he strains against the bonds, trying to take a swing at the smirking man handling his brain. Gabe feels a similar anger at his own privacy being breached.

“Explains quite a bit, mon cher. “ Amelie mutters from behind him.

“Don’t.” Gabe growls.

“ _Fast forward.”_ The woman groans, “ _I don’t want to see them fucking.”_

Gabe does.

Jack’s eyes go wide as the machine buzzes to life and the screen lights up with fairy lights.

A mirror is on a wall across from a large bed, where Memory Gabe is fucking Jack from behind, blonde hair in his grip and tugging it back so Jack can see. The sounds of a party drift in from the window. A festival in Gabriel’s home town, where he had insisted on taking Jack for the weekend.

The weekend before everything went to shit.

“ _Look at yourself, mi sol. So beautiful for me.”_ Memory Gabe whispers into Jack’s ear, the grunting and the whimpering from the pale man so close, yet so far away in time.

Gabe swallows around the acid that burns into his throat. The man shuts off the computer and Jack slumps into the chair, head shaking side to side, eyes closed once more.

“ _We are getting closer.”_ The man laughs, “ _How did a fag end up a strike commander anyhow?”_

Jack doesn’t answer.

The machine whirls back to life and this memory is their team standing before the Colonel as he names Jack Morrison Strike Team Commander. Everyone around them cheers but Jack’s eyes go to Gabriel first, who is standing at attention and giving away nothing. Not the anger. Not the disappointment.

The memory snaps off.

“ _Stop._ ” Jack whispers, “ _They never told me. I’ve spent the last six years-.”_

The man angrily presses another button and Jack throws his head back against the chair’s head rest as the blue screen sizzles before them all.

Gabriel would never forget this memory.

Him and Jack standing in the middle of the building, shouting at each other. Screaming, fists clenched. Jack pleading with him, Gabriel not listening. So blinded by his hatred and his resentment. Jack trying to apologize.

Then the entire memory goes up in flames.

“ _It’s too far ahead!”_ The woman shouts, “ _This is after the explosion!”_

“ _It won’t go BACK.”_ The man snaps back at her.

The screen blinks back on. It’s hazy, he can barely see Jacks hand as it reaches out through the broken cement and brick. He rubs his hand down his faces and it comes away bloody, but the vision is wavering. Flickering hazy and clear in quick, dizzying moments.

“ _Gabe?!”_ Jack shouts, “ _Gabriel?!”_ He’s shoving aside debris, crawling from the mess around him. Vision fading.

Memory Jack spots something blurry ahead and he crawls for it, reaching out, whispering apologies.

Gabe doesn’t remember this.

He had been dead already.

Seeing it is nauseating.

A high pitched whine starts as Jack’s fingers curl into Gabriel’s blackwatch uniform. The cry is ugly and demented. Gabriel can’t tell if it’s coming from Memory Jack or the one seated in an interrogation room fifty feet below him.

The machine shuts down and the scientists stand there hands hovering above keyboards, staring at the shaking man in the chair before them. Gabriel snarls and dissolves his body into a wraith, descending through the floors in a matter of seconds. He reforms in front of Jack and the two morons scream on either side of him.

“Reaper this is a private session!” The woman shouts.

He forms a shotgun and points it at her nose, making her go cross-eyed. “Get out of my sight.” The man starts to say something, “NOW!”

They vacate the room in a rush of lab coats and curses, threats to go to the highers. Gabe doesn’t care. He kneels before the soldier setting a smoking hand on his thigh.

Jack tenses and his eyes snap open, the once blue now a milky sheen.

“Are you blind?” Gabriel asks quietly as he bends to start unhooking Jack’s feet and hands from the bindings.

Jack doesn’t say anything at first, “Gabriel?”

“Si, mi luna.” Gabe mutters.

Once Jack’s hands are free he reaches out desperately and traces the lines of Gabriel’s face. The demented edges and the smoking tendrils that feel like oil slick sometimes, he traces them reverently.

“Ugly, aren’t I?”

“Alive.” Jack whispers.

“No.” Gabe tilts his head into Jacks right hand, “But somewhere in between.”

Gabe leans forward and releases the buckle that holds Jack’s head in place. Jack runs his hands down Gabe’s neck and brings his head forward until their foreheads are touching.

“Alive.” He mutters again.

Gabriel doesn’t correct him again.

 


End file.
